A Community Forum with Michael Naimark & Friends
Technology is shaping our lives bigger and faster than ever. Many of the players have become ultra-wealthy. World-changing tools for human and ecological connection and evolution have emerged. But so have massive fumbles, particularly in Silicon Valley and in Cambridge Massachusetts.
Now may be a good moment to ask: Where do the arts fit in? Can the arts add a more holistic and critical perspective to tech, symbiotically? Can projects be cultivated that are simultaneously good for art, good for tech, and good for the world? Can these projects have (almost) Silicon Valley budgets and be financially sustainable as a mission-driven nonprofit enterprise, a new kind of “arts lab?”
Please join Michael Naimark for a brief presentation and a community forum of friends and colleagues for discussion and debate.
With moderation support and wisdom from:
Hosted by SFAI President Gordon Knox and SFAI Art & Technology Chair Cristóbal Martínez.
Forum at 7:00 pm
Refreshments at 8:30 pm
Seating is limited.
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Michael Naimark has spent several decades mindfully circulating as a media artist inside corporate, academic, and nonprofit worlds. His bio in Valley of Genius: The Uncensored History of Silicon Valley (Hachette, 2018) reads “a Silicon Valley–based artist and inventor, with the distinction of having worked in most of the most interesting R&D labs and creative shops in the Valley: Atari Research, the Apple Multimedia Lab, Lucasfilm’s interactive division, Interval Research, and Google’s VR division.” He’s held numerous faculty positions, including, over the last decade, at NYU Tisch, USC Cinema, and the MIT Media Lab, where he was on the original design team decades earlier. He’s had residencies at the ZKM (Germany), the Banff Centre (Canada), IAMAS (Japan), Ars Electronica (Austria), and the Exploratorium. Once a longtime San Franciscan, Michael has taught, presented, and exhibited at most every college (including SFAI), art center, and museum in the Bay Area.
Michael is currently Visiting Faculty in the Interactive Media Arts program at NYU Shanghai. He recently published How the 62 Year Story of Art at MIT Shaped the Media Lab Ethos as largely untold background to the current uproar.
